I’m going to catch you, bitch! it thought trium-phantly.
At first, chances of that had seemed slim. It had gotten within twenty yards of the os pa near the top of the pit—sixty short feet-but the bitch had been able to find a little extra and beat it to the top. Once she started down the other side, Mary had been able to extend her lead in a hurry, from twenty yards to sixty to a hundred and fifty. Because she could breathe deeply, she could cope with her body’s oxygen debt. Ellen Carver’s body, on the other hand, was rapidly losing the ability to do either. The vaginal bleeding had become a flood, something that would kill the Ellen-body in the next twenty minutes or so anyway.
… but if Tak was able to catch Mary, it wouldn’t matter how much the remains of Ellen Carver bled; it would have a place to go. But as it came over the rim of the pit, something had ruptured in Ellen’s left lung, as well. Now with every exhale it was not just spraying a fine mist of red but shooting out liquid jets of blood and tissue from both Ellen’s mouth and nose. And it couldn’t get enough fresh oxygen to keep up the chase. Not with just one working lung.
Then, a miracle. Running too fast for the grade and trying to look back over her shoulder at the same time, the bitch’s feet tangled together and she took a spectacular tumble, hitting the gravel surface of the road in a kind of swandive and ploughing downhill for almost ten feet before she came to a stop, leaving a dark drag-mark behind her. She lay face-down with her arms extended, trembling all over. In the starlight her splayed hands looked like pale creatures fished out of a tidepool. Tak saw her try to get a knee under her. It came partway up, then relaxed and slid back again.
Now! Now! Tak ah wan’ Tak forced the Ellen-body into a semblance of a run, gambling on the last of that body’s energy, gambling on its own agility to keep from tripping and falling as the bitch had done. The back-and-forth of its respiration had become a kind of wet chugging in Ellen’s throat, like a piston running in thick grease. Ellen’s sensory equipment was graying out at the edges, getting ready to shut down. But she would last a little longer. Just a little. And a little was all it would take.
Ahundred and forty yards.
Ahundred and twenty.
Tak ran at the woman lying in the road, screaming in soundless, hungry triumph as it closed the gap.
Mary could hear something coming, something that was yelling nonsense words in a thick, gargly voice Could hear the thud of shoes on the gravel. Closing in But it all seemed unimportant. Like things heard in a dream. And surely this had to be a dream…
didn’t it.
Get up, Mary! You have to getup!
She looked around and saw something awful but not in the least dreamlike bearing down on her. Its hair flew out behind it. One of its eyes had ruptured. Blood exploded from its mouth with each breath. And on its face was the look of a starving animal abandoning the stalk and staking everything on one last charge.
GET UP, MARY! GET UP!
1can’t, I’m scraped all over and it’s too late anyway, she moaned to the voice, but even as she was moaning she was struggling with her knee again, trying to cock it under her.
This time she managed the trick and struggled upward with the knee as her center, trying to pull herself out of gravity’s well this one last time.
The Ellen-thing was in full sprint now. It seemed to be exploding out of its clothes as it came. And it was scream ing: a drawn-out howl of rage and hunger packed in blood.
Mary got on her feet, screaming herself now as the thing swooped down, reaching out, grasping for her with its fingers. She threw herself into a full downhill run, eyes bulging, mouth sprung open in a full-jawed but silent scream.
Ahand, sickeningly hot, slapped down between her shoulderblades and tried to twist itself into her shirt. Mary hunched forward and almost fell as her upper body swayed out beyond the point of balance, but the hand slipped away.
“Bitch!” An inhuman, guttural growl-from right behind her-and this time the hand closed in her hair. It might have held if the hair had been dry, but it was slick-almost slimy-with sweat. For a moment she felt the thing’s fingers on the back of her neck and then they were gone. She ran down the slope in lengthening leaps, her fear now mingling with a kind of crazy exhilaration.
There was a thud from behind her. She risked a look back and saw that the Ellen-thing had gone down. It lay curled in on itself like a crushed snail. Its hands opened and closed on thin air, as if still searching for the woman who had barely managed to elude it.
Mary turned and focused on the blinker-light. It was closer now… and there were other lights, as well, she was sure of it. Headlights, and coming this way. She focused on them, ran toward them.
She never even registered the large shape which passed silently above her.
ALL over.
It had come so close-had actually touched the bitch’s hair-but at the last second Mary had eluded it. And even as she began to draw away again, Ellen’s feet had crossed and Tak went down, listening to the rupturing sounds from inside the Ellen-body as it rolled onto its side, grasping at the air as if it might find handholds in it.
It rolled over onto Ellen’s back, staring up at the star—filled sky, moaning with pain and hate. To have come so close!
That was when it saw the dark shape up there, blotting out the stars in a kind of gliding crucifix, and felt a sudden fresh burst of hope.
It had thought of the wolf and then dismissed the idea because the wolf was too far away, but it had been wrong to believe the wolf was the only can toi vessel which might hold Tak for a little while.
There was this.
“Mi him,” it whispered in its dying, blood-thick voice. “Can de lach, mi him, mm en tow.
Tak!”
Come to me. Come to Tak, come to the old one, come to the heart of the unformed.
Come to me, vessel.
It held up Ellen’s dying arms, and the golden eagle flut-tered down into them, staring into Tak’s dying face with rapt eyes.
“Don’t Look at the bodies,” Johnny said. He was rolling the ore-cart away from the ATV.
David was helping.
“I’m not, believe me,” David said. “I’ve seen enough bodies to last me a lifetime.”
“I think that’s good enough.” Johnny started toward the driver’s side of the ATV and tripped over something. David grabbed his arm, although he, Johnny, hadn’t come especially close to falling. “Watch it, Gramps.”
“You got a mouth on you, kid.”
It was the hammer he’d tripped on. He picked it up, turned to toss it back onto the worktable, then reconsid-ered and stuck the rubber-sleeved handle into the belt of his chaps. The chaps now had enough blood and dirt grimed into them to look almost like the real thing, and the hammer felt right there, somehow.
There was a control-box set to the right of the metal door. Johnny pushed the blue button marked up, mentally prepared for more problems, but the door rattled smoothly along its track. The air that came in, smelling faintly of Indian paintbrush and sage, was fresh and sweet-like heaven. David filled his chest with it, turned to Johnny, and smiled. “Nice.”
“Yeah. Come on, hop in this beauty. Take you for a spin…, David climbed into the front passenger seat of the vehicle, which looked like a high—slung, oversized golf—cart. Johnny turned the key and the engine caught at once. As he ran it out through the open door, it occurred to him that none of this was happening. It was all just part of an idea h&d had for a new novel. A fantasy tale, perhaps even an outright horror novel. Something of a departure for John Edward Marinville, either way.
Not the sort of stuff of which serious literature was made, but so what. He was getting on, and if he wanted to take himself a little less seriously, surely he had that right. There was no need to shoulder each book like a backpack filled with rocks and then sprint uphill with it.